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Venzoja
Participant2025-05-06 at 11:12Post count: 1Need Help with Gira HomeServer 4 – Extracting Project and Cloning to Virtual Machine
Dear Forum Members,
I have a physical Gira HomeServer 4 (IP: 192.х.х.205, firmware 4.3.0) that has been running for a very long time. A project was uploaded to it years ago (configured via KNX ETS Gira Expert), but unfortunately, the original project file has been lost. The system is currently operational, but I’m unable to fix bugs or make adjustments due to the missing project file. Additionally, I’m concerned that if the Gira HomeServer 4 fails, I’ll be left without any configuration.
I have physical access to the server and would like to explore options to recover the project and secure the data. Here are my questions:
Is it possible to extract the project by cloning the server’s partitions?
Since I have physical access to the server, can I clone its partitions (e.g., using tools like dd or similar) and extract the project file (e.g., .proj or related data) from the cloned image? If so, what tools or steps would you recommend?
Can I migrate the data from the physical HomeServer to a virtual (VM,hyper) Gira HomeServer 4 ?
Is it feasible to transfer the data (partitions, project, and settings) from my physical HomeServer to a virtual machine running a Gira HomeServer 4 image (e.g., the modified 4.12 image shared by sinn3r)? If yes, what would be the best approach to achieve this while preserving the existing configuration?Any advice, tools, or steps would be greatly appreciated! I’m worried about losing the configuration entirely if the hardware fails, so I’d like to secure a backup as soon as possible.
Thank you in advance for your help!
Best regards,
Jacky123
Participant2025-10-08 at 11:03Post count: 2Hi, doing 1:1 copy is doable, not sure if transfering the project data between 4.3 and any newer version will work (as the project file copy on linux), you may experiment yourself once you do the copy to VM.
For doing 1:1 copy, best is to boot HS4.3 machine from a USB with e.g. Acronis True Image, make a backup of the HS IDE HDD, which than you may copy to a vmdk disk in VM. In VM make a new VM, boot the VM from the same Acronis ISO image and recover the backup-ed disk image to newely created VM disk. Remember to define your VM MAC properly, you may also need to experiment with VM network card settings if the default settings don’t work and network is down or missing.
Once you have it in VM you may try (connecting the HS VM disk to VM with newer HS version) to copy the project directory and see it this works. The reverse rengineering of the project is rather not possible.
See also: https://www.roelbroersma.nl/forums/topic/4-11-auf-einem-standard-debian-linux/#post-22488
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This reply was modified 1 week, 6 days ago by
Jacky123.
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This reply was modified 1 week, 6 days ago by
Jacky123.
sinn3r
Participant2025-10-11 at 09:13Post count: 375I’m sorry to say this, but without the original Expert project, you’ll never be able to update your HomeServer. The project file stored on the HomeServer is tied to the specific software version, and 4.3 is already quite outdated. You can’t simply copy the project file to a VM running version 4.12 or 4.13, because it needs to be transferred using the matching Expert version for that software.
So there’s no way around it—you’ll need to locate the original project and then update it step by step. The required software versions for each update stage are listed in the Gira documentation. Otherwise, you’d probably have to rebuild the entire project from scratch, which could be very difficult, especially if complex logic or custom configurations were implemented.
You can stick with version 4.3 indefinitely and even virtualize it by backing up the HomeServer’s storage using an imaging tool and converting it into a VMDK file. As far as I recall, version 4.3 should boot as long as the network MAC address is correctly adapted to your original HomeServer, since the more complex validation checks were only introduced in later versions.
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This reply was modified 1 week, 6 days ago by
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